Stop the Hollyweb

The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) mission statement includes, "Web
for All: The social value of the Web is that it enables human
communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of
W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people,
whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native
language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental
ability."1

But the World Wide Web is in real danger of being encircled and
ultimately extinguished by proprietary software. The Free Software
Foundation, through our Defective by Design campaign, is working to
stop the attempted takeover, and we need your
help.

The Web is yours. In multiple senses, it is powered by free
software. Most Web sites are served and run using free software.
WordPress and Drupal, both distributed under the GNU General Public
License, are premier choices in the field of Web publishing systems.
The standardized technologies underlying the Web must by rule be
implementable without licensing, so free software browsers are on
equal footing with their proprietary counterparts when engaging
anything considered an "official" part of the Web.

As a result, this part of the Web experience is fundamentally
consistent with the ethical values of the free software movement. The
nonstandard "unofficial" parts of the Web, on the other hand, have
always been hostile territory for free software users and their
values. Countless times, we've been unable to do simple things like
look at restaurant menus or watch funny videos because they required
Adobe Flash. We couldn't stream videos on Netflix or watch the
Olympics because doing so required Silverlight.

The definition of the Web does not disallow such proprietary warts;
it just says those unfortunate additions aren't actually part of the
Web. Browsers aren't expected to support them out of the box. Separate
programs need to be installed, and users need to be convinced that
doing so is worth it.

While ubiquitous in some ways, these proprietary plugins are also
notorious for crashing systems, for causing compatibility headaches,
for making media inaccessible to screen readers and search engines,
and for increasingly being not worth it.

The fact that companies have had to be responsible for providing
support for their own use of these problematic extensions has served
as some kind of check on any possibility that they would take over the
Web. Being responsible for them means modifying code for multiple
operating systems, and multiple browsers. This job has gotten harder,
as more operating systems are in use now than ever before in the Web's
history, given the (unfortunate) growth of OS X, the (better) growth
of GNU/Linux, and the proliferation of mobile platforms.

If you were a company maintaining a system using one of these plugins,
having to handle all the accompanying angry customer complaints and
software bugs, what would you do? You'd try to get someone else to
take the heat off you, in a way that smoothed the operation without
giving up any of your control. You'd try to convince the primary
organization responsible for safeguarding the Web -- the W3C -- to
take your side and declare these proprietary plugins part of the
official Web culture.

That's exactly what Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, and Google are trying
to do, through a proposed addition they call Encrypted Media
Extensions (EME). They are operating in an alliance with Hollywood, to
turn the official Web into the Hollyweb.

In the Hollyweb, proprietary media plugins are used to enforce Digital
Restrictions Management (DRM) schemes. Even though my earlier examples
were restaurants and entertainment, the value of the freedom at stake
here is immense. DRM schemes control every aspect of how computer
users interact with media. They can prevent visually impaired people
from having texts read aloud, they can prevent the hearing impaired
from having subtitles, they can prevent scholars from extracting clips
to critique, they can prevent budding artists from collaging the media
that surrounds them into new forms, and much more.

Given their mission statement, one would reasonably expect anyone
proposing such a system to the W3C to be unceremoniously shown the
door. There is nothing about DRM that is compatible with the "Web for
All."

We were shocked to instead find the W3C warmly inviting these efforts
in for dinner. CEO Jeff Jaffe, in response to our delivery of over
22,500 signatures opposing EME, adopted the skewed language of those
who seek endorsement for their plan to restrict Web users: "Therefore,
while the actual DRM schemes are clearly not open, the Open Web must
accommodate them as best possible, as long as we don't cross the
boundary of standards with patent encumbrances; or standards that
cannot be implemented in open source."2

The organization responsible for keeping the Web free has declared
that bending over backward to accommodate companies restricting the
freedom of individuals somehow makes the Web more free. Jaffe is
right that EME isn't itself proprietary -- but its sole purpose is to
provide an easy, unified way for proprietary DRM plugins to operate.
EME doesn't "cross the boundary of standards with patent
encumbrances," it just builds a nifty bridge right over it. Endorsing
this kind of shim makes the W3C mission a sham.

We need your help to make the Web not just "open," but as free as
the software that powers it. There are multiple ways you can help:

Financially support our work on your behalf, by joining as an
associate member or contributing what you can.

Make sure you are not financially supporting those working against
you -- cancel your Netflix streaming subscription, and avoid
related Microsoft, Apple, and Google products until they stop
pushing DRM.

Make your position known, by signing our petition against the
Hollyweb. While you're at it, join the mailing lists for this
effort in order to stay up-to-date and become part of the momentum
for change.

The W3C standards approval process is a long one. We are in the early
stages of this conflict, and these measures are only the first steps.
The air of defeatism expressed by the leadership of the W3C at this
moment in time is disheartening, but we needn't take it to heart. We
have eliminated DRM in many contexts, and we can do it here too. But
even just forcing companies to continue bearing the full
responsibility and cost for deploying their own DRM systems would be a
huge victory. It would add to the momentum we've seen against plugins
like Flash and Silverlight toward HTML-based media players using free
media formats, while also preserving the moral authority of the Web's
principles. Tell the W3C to stay strong, and say no to the Hollyweb.